


But that is much

by Pistol



Series: Team Dynamics, Family, and Other Things That Will Hurt You [3]
Category: The Losers (2010)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:08:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22042639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pistol/pseuds/Pistol
Summary: After a year Clay buys a ring. It's small, plain, and it's all he can afford on a corporals' salary, but the old woman behind the counter assures him it's perfect.
Relationships: Clay/OFC, Hints of Clay/Roque
Series: Team Dynamics, Family, and Other Things That Will Hurt You [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1586602
Comments: 10
Kudos: 69





	But that is much

**Author's Note:**

> For the lovely Cleo, who asked for a fic. <3
> 
> Beta work by Coinin, who is a rock in the storm of my grammar and punctuation. ILU. <3

Clay joins the Army on his eighteenth birthday.

His father had served, and his father before him, so there's no surprise or shock, just a quiet drink with his father and a tearful hug from his mother.

\----

There's a diner half an hour from base that Clay finds on a windy Sunday morning. His bacon is burnt, his pancakes are gooey, and his eggs have more than a few shells in them. Still, he cleans his plate and leaves a good tip.

He comes back on Monday for dinner. His meatloaf is mostly loaf and his coffee is strangely salty. Again, he cleans his plate and leaves a good tip.

He's busy on Tuesday, but on Wednesday he chokes down a hamburger that's mostly char and feels brave enough to try some pie. He leaves a good tip and isn't surprised when he spends his night camped out in his bathroom.

Thursday is chicken noodle soup that somehow manages to have neither chicken or noodles in it. His waitress laughs when she sees his reaction to it.

"You know, I was gonna wait and let you take your time doing this, but I'm starting to worry the food might kill you before you get the nerve to talk to me."

Clay chokes down a mouthful of soup, looking up at her in shock, "I... Well, I-"

"Great! I'm free in twenty, so how about you stop pretending to like the food here and take me to get a burger down the road. They're _much_ better than ours, I promise."

"Um," he feels his face turning red as he trips over his words, "I mean, yes, if you-"

She sighs dramatically, shaking her head, "You're lucky you're cute."

\----

She refuses to let him pay for her meal but ends up stealing half his fires.

"I'll buy you our own fries."

She snorts, nose crinkling as she swipes another fry from his plate. "Why would I want my own fries when I could steal them from you?"

"Oh."

"Yeah. _Oh._"

Clay's not sure what to say to that, but the fry theft doesn't seem so bad after that.

\----

Her name is Chloe, she's from Texas, and she thinks Clay's brave for joining the army.

He tries to tell her that he isn't, but she only laughs.

"You just haven't had your moment yet. My father went over in Vietnam and he never thought of himself as brave." She gives a soft look, "Turns out, he was so brave he was one of the twenty-two men who received the Medal of Honor. It was posthumously, but still."

Clay opens and closes his mouth, unsure of what to say, but Chloe smiles, placing her hand over his.

"Don't ruin the moment," she says with a kind smile.

"I could never be as brave as you."

Chloe laughs, twining their fingers together, the contrast between them drawing his eyes.

"I think you could be. And more. You just need the right motivation. A cause. A motivation."

"Like what?"

"Oh, I don't know," she gives him a smirk and a dainty shrug, "I'm hoping seeing me again will make you brave enough to at least ask for a second date."

Clay finds the courage to ask.

\----

On their second date he takes her to the movies, and she takes him to her place afterwards.

"A reward," Chloe whispers in between kisses, "For being so brave."

\----

Chloe collects postcards and maps of places she's never been. She collects books full of pictures of foreign beaches, ancient ruins, and tropical forests.

When he asks about them, her dark eyes glitter with excitement and she spends an hour showing him the world through her books and glossy photos. She shows him a waterfall as tall as a skyscraper, deserts with trees and flowers growing in them, and places where man's presence has only been felt in passing.

The beauty captured in her photos is overwhelming, but doesn't compare to her. He's not brave enough to tell her this. Yet.

"There's more to this world than this silly little town," she tells him, running a finger along the lines of the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile. "I'm going to see what's out there someday. In person. I'll take my own pictures, maybe make my own book." Chloe glances up at him with a bright smile, "If you play your cards right, I might even let you tag along."

"I'd follow you anywhere," he means it, and she seems to know this. Her hand reaches out, cupping his cheek as her eyes soften.

"You'd better. An adventure is no fun when you're all alone."

\----

Chloe is smart, beautiful, and she takes no shit from anyone.

She remembers to buy him socks when he forgets that his have holes, she listens to his stories from work, and she makes him feel invincible.

She tells him about her dreams, about the adventures they'll have someday, and whenever they grab a burger she still steals his fries.

\----

He invites her to meet his parents after half a year. It's nothing he's ever done before, but it feels right.

Chloe laughs until she realizes he's serious, and then she kisses him.

"Are you sure?" She asks him, smoothing down her hands down dress anxiously, "This is... big."

"So? Be _brave_," Clay tells her with a smirk.

\----

She wears the necklace he bought her for their anniversary with an outfit she spent two weeks saving up for. She reapplies her makeup twice before moving his shaving mirror and a kitchen chair next to the stove. There, she spends another hour with her hot comb and brushes.

"How do I look?" Chloe asks, spinning slowly.

"You're perfect." It’s impossible to think otherwise. It’s impossible to think anyone could even think otherwise.

\----

It doesn't occur to Clay to mention to his parents that the girl he's bringing home might not be white.

\----

Clay wants to say something, anything, to make it right, but there's nothing. There's only his hands clenching on the steering wheel, one hand already angry and swelling while Chloe sits with red eyes staring out the passenger window.

It's suddenly all too easy to see the difference between them. It's easy to feel angry at his own skin for how it stands out when next to hers.

Something he once thought only beautiful now seems tainted.

"I'm sorry... I-"

"Don't," Chloe says firmly. "Just let me be mad for a while without worrying you might do something stupid." She pauses, "Well, _stupider._"

Clay lets the regrets wash over him. "I'm sorry," he tries again.

Chloe kisses his cheek and goes back to looking out the window.

\----

Chloe cries that night. She does so quietly, locked in the bathroom with the water running in the hope he won't notice.

He does, and it's the hardest thing in the world not to break down the door.

Instead, he ices his hand and tries to figure out how to make this better. He tries to figure out where this leaves them without making her more upset. He tries to figure out where this leaves him with his family.

The knowledge that this might not be the last time something like this will happen isn't something he knows how to handle. In some ways, it's not something he wants to handle.

For one quiet minute he wants to just set the world on fire. Just let it burn down, and take Chloe with him and go somewhere else. Somewhere from one of her pictures, maybe farther. Since he's dreaming, maybe he could steal a rocket ship and take her to a distant galaxy. A galaxy she could be the first to explore, and no one would be concerned that their skin doesn't match.

He hears the door open, and he stands from the couch, watching her enter the room like it's the first time she's been here and not the thousandth time.

"We could get a spaceship," Clay says, because he's an idiot. He's always an idiot when it comes to her. "You could see the stars. I'd go with you... if you still wanted me too."

"Don't be stupid." Chloe gives him a hard look that can't hide the small smile underneath. The small smile that makes his chest relax and lets him know they'll be okay. If not right now, sometime soon. He'll still turn on his soaps and she'll pretend it's for her benefit, not his, and she'll still steal his fries and he'll pretend to hate it.

"We'd die out there, Clay. There's no air in space."

"We could make our own."

"No. We can't. And we can't live on love alone, either, Romeo. The air is down here, so we'll have to make do."

\----

After a year Clay buys a ring. It's small, plain, and it's all he can afford on a corporals' salary, but the old woman behind the counter assures him it's perfect.

"Tell you what, honey, you figure out something you want it to say, and I'll engrave it inside the band for you. No extra charge."

\----

Clay carries the ring in his pocket and spends three months trying to figure out what it should say.

He spends his free time at the library, browsing for hours and checking out any book that looks like it might be about love in hopes of finding inspiration.

He knows about love, but the love he knows isn't as beautiful as some of the words in these books. Their love is more silly, familiar, with sour morning kisses. And it's not always soft smiles and talks of adventures. There's been squabbles. A stupid fight that ripped his chest apart and left her crying.

He can't find the words for that love in the library, but he's not ready to give up. A love like theirs?

The words are out there, waiting for him to find them.

\----

"Frank, just ask me already," Chloe whispers to him one night. "I'm tired of listening to love ballads and tripping over 17th century poetry books. _Be brave_"

He freezes, looking at her in shock.

"I wash your clothes, you moron. And you've left that ring in your pants pocket no less than six times."

"Oh. I wanted to get it engraved first."

"Why?"

"The lady at the store said you'd like it."

Chloe snorts, borrowing closer to tuck her cold feet into his. "Well, what's more important to me is that it happens sometime this century."

"Well, then-"

"Yes."

Clay groans, "I have to ask the question... The books said so."

"Why? You've been asking me for months in your own backwards way, and you _know_ the answer," Chloe pulls him down for a chaste kiss, "There _is_ such a thing as a stupid question, Clay."

\----

She wears a white sundress and laughs at him when he drops the unengraved ring on the floor twice before getting it on her finger. She looks gorgeous and Clay feels like he can't breathe.

\----

Clay's at muster when his CO gets handed a letter from a runner. Clay's pulled aside, and given an address and told things he can't comprehend.

\----

She wears a white sheet and is laying on a metal table with her eyes closed when he sees her. She would look like she's sleeping but she's too still, and Clay feels like he can't breathe.

\----

Chloe's cremated. They put her body in a furnace and an older man insists that maybe this isn't something he needs to see. Clay insists otherwise.

A part of Clay burns away with her in that fire, and the part of him that was scared seems to melt away and he feels like maybe Chloe was right. Maybe he needed to find his moment.

It doesn't seem right that his moment came and she isn't there to see it.

It doesn't seem fair that his moment comes to him while her body is being turned to ash.

\----

He buys ten cigars on his way home. He smokes one, and throws the others out, carefully filling their tubes with ashes. He painstakingly writes out the names of ten places she never got to see on each tube.

\----

The man who robbed the diner and killed Chloe is released after six months. Clay reads about it in the paper, hands still and pulse calm.

His name is Robert Williams, and the paper tells Clay that Robert has shown remorse for his actions.

\----

Clay follows Robert to a bar.

Clay goes home that night. Robert doesn't.

\----

"I want to get out there."

The colonel looks Clay over steadily, "Where?"

"Anywhere. I'll do anything, sir. _Anything_. I just need to see the world."

"Anything?"

The question is loaded, but Clay feels brave, "Yes, sir."

\----

Clay is loaded on a bus that night with men who spend the ride trying to look like they aren't nervous.

Clay doesn't feel nervous.

\----

One year later he sets foot on foreign soil for the first time, a cigar tube burning a hole in his pocket as he and his unit kill their way to the next green zone.

He's limping, dehydrated, and possibly in shock by the time they make it; but he finds the time and strength to bury a tube of ashes out under a flowering tree.

One down. Nine to go.

\----

Seven years later he's told he's getting his own team.

Clay meets Roque; he's quiet and dangerous with miles of triggers he tries to hide.

Some of those triggers Clay pulls by accident. Some on purpose. Each time it ends with Roque grinning at him with wild eyes and bloody knuckles.

\----

"What is that?" Roque gestures to the aged cigar tube Clay had pulled from his pocket.

"Ashes," Clay admits, carefully placing the tube into the hole and covering it over with sand. "Chloe wanted to see the world."

"Chloe?"

"She was my wife."

Roque just nods, watching as Clay smoothes over the sand. He doesn't say anything, but offers Clay a hand when he goes to stand up.

Four down. Six to go.

\----

Only Pooch and Roque are left when Clay finally gets them out.

"Sir," Pooch says in a shaky voice, most of his weight resting on Clay, "I could kiss you, sir."

Somewhere behind them, Roque growls.

"Or not. We could hug," Pooch amends between wheezes.

The medics are waiting for them on the other side of the fence, eager to take Roque and Pooch from Clay and the others.

Once his hands are empty Clay drops down, digging a hole in the ground with hands stained with Pooch's blood.

"Sorry, but this will have to do," he tells the tube as he places it in the earth, "I don't think I'll ever want to come back to this place."

When he stands up, Pooch and Roque are watching him as the medics check them over.

Seven down. Three to go.

\----

Cougar is quiet as he watches Clay dig the eighth hole.

He doesn't offer to help, he doesn't question it, and he looks away when Clay buries the tube.

It seems to please Roque, but it gives Clay his own questions.

\----

Cougar is always quiet, Clay soon learns.

"Cat's got his tongue," Roque says with a lazy smirk, "unless he's around that guy."

He knows Roque is baiting him, so he ignores him, turning up the TV in hopes the soaps will drive Roque from his office before Clay is weak enough to ask something stupid like _what guy?_

\----

Pooch is a bad influence. Well, him or Roque. Either way, Clay's in the mess hall for _them_, not his own curiosity.

"How funny to run into you here, Sergeant," Clay calls out when Cougar notices them.

He's too busy enjoying Cougar's silent anger to notice the warning signs.

\----

Clay watches them after that. Watches Cougar steal Jensen’s food and sees Jensen smile while he does it.

It makes Clay's chest ache, and it makes him tempted to dig up old photos and older hurts.

“Do you know what you're doing?” He doesn't mean to ask it, but he does.

Cougar meets his gaze. His eyes are closed off, and Clay can see the shift in body language that tells him Cougar expects a fight.

“Not like that," Clay amends, "Just … be careful. With our jobs our expiration dates can be shorter than most.” Clay pauses, feeling awkward and raw.

Cougar frowns, watching him carefully, "I know this." After a moment Cougar turns and walks away. Probably to find Jensen and steal more chocolate.

Clay sighs, feeling too old and too jaded, before turning and making his way towards the office. Roque would probably be there, and he'd probably be willing to sit through a soap or two if it meant Clay sharing his beer.

\----

_The most I ever did for you, was to outlive you,_  
But that is much.  
— Edna St. Vincent Millay

**Author's Note:**

> Was previously posted, then taken down. Now it's back up. Beware the errors and typos, I suspect the files I found on my old hard drive are the pre-beta versions.  
Please don't steal any of my silly stories and change some names around and then try to sell them as books on Amazon or I'm gonna have to take everything down again.


End file.
